


What you want

by demiurgent_g



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-22 16:29:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6086701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demiurgent_g/pseuds/demiurgent_g
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a passionate night, Spike realises he wants more from Buffy than being used and gives her an ultimatum: She has to decide what she wants and stop hiding it or they will never see each other again. While she is deciding, Riley bursts back into her life with a job to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There was a feeling niggling at her and she couldn't quite figure it out. She lay, panting, in the ruins of the crypt with her lover wondering about it. She was distracted by his quiet laughter as he looked at the destruction around them and his related comment on the pointlessness of ever decorating. She teased him about his efforts so far. "Is that what you call adding a few candles and a TV? Decorating?"

"Hey!" He tried to look offended but due to his air of lazy satisfaction it lacked conviction. "I'll have you know I spent a long time looking round the dump for that TV!"

She smiled and looked away. As she did he gazed at her, taking in every detail. Had she asked him, he'd have been able to describe exactly how he felt. Happy, grateful, intimate, lonely, frustrated, satisfied and sad. Spike had loved before and such a roiling turmoil of emotion within him was how he felt it should always be. His love was always given with a commitment and intensity that would leave him devastated, whether it was returned or not. He strove to be the best he could, in any way that the recipient of his love required. With Drusilla it had meant savage cruelty; any antic or pastime that would entertain her broken mind and make her happy; and with Buffy it meant this. This and only this. She would let him fight beside her and would resent any impulse to shelter or protect her. She would come to him in the dark of night and hide from her friends. It wasn't him she wanted, he knew that, it was what he could give her. And so, every time they met alone, he gave her what he could.

He always wanted more. Every time he fell asleep, he wished she was cradled in his arms. Every time she left, he wished he had the right to ask her to stay. Every time she attacked him, he stood up to her and gave her the fight she wanted. Every time he stood outside her home in the night he wished he understood.

Looking at her now he wished he knew if she was happy. If she'd got what she wanted. He'd become increasingly creative with her, trying to find something that would meet her needs, but day after day, night after night, whether she came to him or he to her the outcome was the same. She would let him know she wasn't happy and leave.

Without a soul, he couldn't understand her guilt or shame. Without guilt and shame, all he took from their time together was a lot of happy memories and satisfaction. And so he was confused and took her ever nearer the darkness, trying all the things good girls aren't supposed to like. Night after night, she lay with him, returning for more and hating herself.

Tonight, Spike had found a way to get a little of what he wanted. She'd agreed to be bound and he'd taken the opportunity to love her slowly and thoroughly. He'd banished the darkness she sought for one night and tried to compensate with sheer pleasure. Without saying a word he'd succumbed to his deepest wishes and took her to new heights. Every time she crested, he lay with her cradled in his gentle embrace and listened to her breathe until she began to stir and he began again.

Now they lay together in their mutual afterglow and he knew the second he untied her she would leave. He didn't want that. He wondered if he could keep her with him, knowing it wasn't feasible, but unwilling to lose her again. Looking down at her he wished he could bring her closer to him. His chip didn't protect her, he could turn her if he wanted to, but it would hurt her too much and she might not be the same afterwards. His one rule – don't hurt the one you love – underwrote his every action and so, despite the demonic wish to keep her bound and enslaved to his desires, he reached to untie her.

She made a noise, as if she was stopping herself from saying something. He paused and looked down at her. Stretched out beneath him she looked so fragile and vulnerable and he knew she would be getting a kick from being unsafe, but to keep her that way would hurt her. He kissed her gently, then reached up again to remove the bonds. The cords were tight around her wrists and he rubbed them gently in apology, but when he went to untie them, his questing fingers found frayed ends. Startled, he looked sharply at the iron hoop he'd laced her ropes through. Her fingers were clutching onto it, but the ropes that had bound her had been broken.

He looked down at her and one eyebrow raised almost of its own accord. She shrugged defensively and said "I was enjoying myself."

He thought back over their evening, reflecting with serious pleasure on some highlights, until he recalled the point at which she stopped struggling. He'd already brought her to her peak twice and was just about to reach a third when she'd cried out and gone still. He'd stopped and looked at her and her wild eyes briefly regained sanity. She'd frowned and he'd smiled before going back to work. Afterwards, he'd moved in for his cuddle and she'd tensed briefly, as though to reject him, but then she settled into his embrace. He'd helped her come twice more before succumbing to his own physical need.

His heart lurched and he was speechless. She'd been able to leave, all that time, and she'd chosen to stay. Not just for the sex either; all those times they lay cuddling, all of that intimacy that she could have rejected, she could have spurred him onto more active pursuits, pushed him away or even sneered at him. Instead, she'd lain peacefully in his arms and given him a little of what he wanted.

"Invisible again, hmm?" The question came unbidden as he realised she'd hidden her choice to be with him behind the excuse of her bonds, the same way she'd used her temporary invisibility to be with him without fear of being caught. Her eyes narrowed fractionally and her lips tightened. Already defensive, she became upset and that earlier indefinable feeling fled.  
She kicked at him and stormed off to retrieve her clothes. As she dressed, he spoke quietly: "One day, love, you are going to have to admit that you are here because you want to be and, shockingly, that you might even like me."

"You're disgusting, and perverted! There's nothing about this that I want!" she hurled the words at him like knives and they hit their mark. Had he been ensoulled, Spike would have had empathy enough to understand how her attack was in the form of defence - unwilling to admit the truth to herself she pushed away those who would make her see it. Instead, all he had to cling to was his certainty that she had chosen to lie with him, to hide the broken bonds and to accept his closeness as they cuddled.

He hesitated, then for the first time in his life, offered a woman he loved a glimpse into what he wanted. "Here's the thing, love. I want you to be happy." Feeling vulnerable, he leaped up and put on his pants. "You come to me, you do all of these things, it sounds like you like it, then you leave unhappy. I don't want that. I really like doing it, but I don't want you to be unhappy. So tell me, pet, what do you want? What would make you happy?" He dreaded the answer he knew was coming, but walked towards her, hoping that somehow his proximity might cause her to change her mind.

"I want you OUT of my life!" cried Buffy.

"OK. There's the door," he gestured towards it as he turned and walked towards the whiskey he'd liberated from Giles. "I'm not leaving Sunnydale, but I won't follow you. You want me out of your life? It's simple. Don't come back. Be very clear on this love: Stay Away. Because the second you walk through that door again, you're inviting me back in permanently. Understand?"

Buffy looked confused. "It's that easy?"

"There's nothing easy about it, pet."

Scared, she retreated towards the door and opened it. Sunlight slanted through, beckoning to her. She hesitated, then turned back. "Spike, I.."

He looked at her over the glass he held poised near his mouth. She walked slowly back to him and stopped just outside the reach of his arms. He took a hefty swig of the whiskey and watched her. She stepped closer, leaned upwards and kissed him. When she dropped away she whispered: "I don't know what I want, Spike. I haven't since I came back, but I know this," she gestured around them "is all wrong. I've got to go and figure things out and I might not come back."

She walked back towards the door and looked back at the last second. "If I do come back, I need you to know it won't be for this."

"What will it be for?"

"You. If I come back, I'll come back for you."


	2. Chapter 2

Spike remained in his crypt for weeks. At first when he wanted to leave, he wondered; “What if she comes by right now and I’m not here?” When he became annoyed at himself for mooning over her that way and tried to overcome it he never passed the door to the crypt. Whenever he tried his mind would throw up ways they might accidentally meet and while he was thoroughly excited by the prospect, he couldn’t risk her thinking he would give up his side of the bargain so easily.

He called upon Clem for support; begging him to do grocery shopping in exchange for TV time and practicing at kitten poker. It was Clem who kept him in touch with the demon world and gave him his first distraction in weeks when he mentioned the presence of a Suvolte demon locally. Bored, frustrated and in need of some cash to feed his various habits, Spike formulated a plan to entice the Suvolte to nest in his crypt.

It went perfectly – using the alias of “The Doctor” Clem purchased and delivered the required ingredients for a vile concoction which lured the demon with the scent of a potential mate. Upon arrival, it was trapped by a dangerously constructed electrocuted web, held there long enough to lay its eggs and then driven out by strategic use of the same web. During this phase, Spike was electrocuted almost incessantly. After some bartering and nudging there were a couple of potential buyers lining up and Spike was triumphant for several days until a very angry Riley burst open his front door while he and Clem watched TV. Clem stood and retreated rapidly, while Spike maintained his arrogant swagger.

“Soldier boy! I’d no idea you’d be…” his words trailed into silence as Buffy walked into the crypt behind Riley. He abruptly stood and walked towards her, raking his fingers through his hair.

“Buffy, you came!” His surge of relief and joy was tempered by Riley’s presence – there was no reason he could think why she would want to bring her ex along to get him back.

She put her hand out, rejecting him, and his movement slowed. In the background, Clem waved an excited greeting at her before realising he might as well be invisible in this drama.

“Not for….” Her words were tense. “We’re here for the Doctor.”

He was silenced. Although he’d been right, it wasn’t, unfortunately, in the way he had hoped. In the end he managed to mumble out a not-very-convincing “Don’t know what you mean.” Under Riley’s threatening gaze, Spike turned and frantically tried to distract them. “If you brought soldier boy here to experiment, you’re off the mark. I’m strictly a ladies man.”

Enjoying the light of confusion in Riley’s eyes, and finding a measure of relief in Buffy’s nervous tension, Spike pushed a little harder. “Ohhh…” He feigned surprise. “Didn’t you tell him? Was I supposed to be your dirty little secret?”

Riley’s expression changed from confusion to disgust and Buffy flinched. Spike turned a blind eye to her reaction, wanting to rub his triumph into the face of Buffy’s former boyfriend, all too conscious that he’d never had that kind of status himself. Ignoring her was a mistake; her fist came fast and hard, smashing up against his jawline. For a moment his eyes caught hers and in that moment he saw unshed tears. He suddenly felt a failure. He was supposed to make her happy; not do this. Whatever this was. Needling Riley suddenly brought no satisfaction. He wanted them out and was on the verge of telling them to clear off when rustling noises sounded from the entrance to his lower floor, where he stored the eggs and he whipped round to stare. An unknown, athletic female stepped out, dressed as Riley was and with the same nonchalant control over the gun she wielded. She nodded, “The eggs are there.”

“Hey!” Spike’s outrage, although genuine, was a bit flustered. “You can’t just wander around down there, that’s private property! Who the hell are you?”

“Sam Finn, meet Spike. AKA, the Doctor.” Buffy spoke bitterly, and Spike knew her resentment was aimed at him, not the mysterious Ms Finn.

“What is this?” he snarled. “Finn, huh? I don’t remember a sister ever being mentioned, so you must be the Mrs?” When there was no surprise or negative reaction from any of the three, he suddenly felt like a sideshow freak and wondered what kind of kick Buffy was getting out of this. Bitterly he turned to her: “And you! You just happen to lead them here to include me in your big adventure? Why?” Spike, never particularly emotionally stable, was giving full reign to his tendency to lash out irrationally when he was hurt. “Now you know you lost him, you decided to prove to him that he wasn’t missed? What am I in this?”

“You’re the Doctor.” Her words were flat and spoken with absolute conviction. “We wanted to find out who it was that threated Sunnydale with a brace of Suvolte demons. It left a nice clear trail when it escaped your trap and we just had to follow it back to the start. Imagine my surprise when we found it came out of your favourite sewer pipe.” She spoke coldly, staring him in the eyes as she did, barely blinking. “How could you, Spike?”

“What is this? You’re disappointed in me now?” He shrugged and gestured at her as dismissively as he could. “You know what I am. You’ve always known.”

She was silent for a few moments as she struggled for the words. “I should have known.” Her words were quiet. “But for some reason, you made me believe that you wanted to be better than that. I guess that was a lie.” Spike tried to counter her flat statement but she cut him off completely; turning to Riley as she did so. “Let’s grab the eggs.”

Sam opened the hatch to the crypt then hesitated before climbing down. Moving fast, she crouched and gazed into the space below before leaping back up, throwing her belt of explosives and an unclipped grenade down there and slamming down the hatch, holding it firmly down against the explosion.

Nonchalantly she smiled at her husband. “I guess they got too warm – they were already hatching.”

“Not much point staying here then. Buffy?”

She had returned her gaze to Spike and she practically radiated disappointment. “Yeah, I’m with you, Riley.”

As she followed Riley and Sam out, Spike took an impulsive step after her, but then deflated as he realised he’d completely lost. Clem crept forwards and looked enquiringly at Spike. “Now what?” he asked.

“Well there’s no more bloody eggs, that’s for sure.” Spike wrenched the top off the whiskey and swigged from the bottle neck. Abruptly, he turned to Clem, “And what the hell did she mean, being all disappointed at me like that?”

“Well, you know.” Clem’s soul gave him insights Spike lacked. He forgot that sometimes, as now, when Spike had to gesture him to continue because he definitely did not know. “She’s the Slayer. The embodiment of the powers of good. You’re in love with her and want her to love you back. For that to ever happen, she needs you to be good too.”

“I am good,” railed Spike. “With this bloody chip in my head I don’t have any other choice!”

“No.” Clem shook his head and his ears flapped sadly. “No, no. You were trading on the black market, putting a town full of people at the mercy of a family of Suvolte demons, just to make money. That’s not good.”

Spike took another hefty swig of the whiskey and sat morosely on his sofa. The explosion had cut the electricity and the TV now stared blankly back at him.

“Was your bloody idea.” He muttered, offering Clem the whiskey bottle. He declined and sat down too.

Back home, Buffy had seen off Sam and Riley, leaving the Scoobies to revel in how awesome they were while she retreated to her room. She curled up on her bed in silence and hugged a pillow. A part of her was weeping inside, even as her face remained emotionless. Eventually she stood and opened the window. She stared outside for long minutes, wistfully. She’d done this every night for the past week, always looking towards the tree Spike had hidden behind while watching the house. She smiled as she thought how he always believed his actions were completely secret, not realising that every morning she cleared away his cigarette butts. She told herself it was so no-one else realised he was doing it, but couldn’t think of a good reason why that could possibly matter.

The first morning she’d gone out and there were none there, she was shocked. It didn’t seem possible. On a daily basis she expected him to crack and each morning she checked. As time passed, she became confused, almost concerned, and on occasion she even brought him up in Scooby conversations to see if anyone else had seen or heard from him. They hadn’t, but assumed he’d got the message and left town, so his name always sank and disappeared from conversation almost immediately after she raised it.

Before discovering he was the Doctor, she had been on the verge of going to him and inviting him back into her life as a trusted friend. Now she knew that wasn’t possible; no one who could do that could be trusted.

On the other hand, she couldn’t kill him. Yet. If he came for her, she could. If he broke their pact and sought her out, she felt she could consider him fair game. In her mind she listed the reasons that would make it OK to kill him, counting them out, over and over, wondering which would most likely come to pass. Wondering if she could do it.

She’d killed Angel and she’d loved him. Killing Spike would be a piece of nothing. He could fight back, he could hurt her, and it would be justified. And yet a part of her did not want to cross that line.

She lay down in her bed and rolled onto her side, staring out the window. The moon hung heavily in the black sky and she felt isolated. She reached her hands above her head, gripping the bed head, and cast her mind back to the feeling of being in his arms that night. Being cherished. Being loved, even by a demon. She and Spike had crossed a line that night and since then she hadn’t been able to forget.

Back in the crypt, Spike lay on the sofa before the defunct TV, trying to sleep and failing utterly as his mind replayed every particular of the day’s events. He kept fixating in particular on the look in her eyes, the disappointment, as she had given up on him. The loss of his stuff in the basement had barely registered, even when Clem had commented on it and even his discomfort now wasn’t enough to help him forget that moment where he felt her sever the fragile bond they had been building.

Outside, the sounds of demon revelry beckoned but he had no heart for the party and merely wished the upper levels of the crypt were as well soundproofed as the basement. He moved to turn on the TV and growled in frustration as he recalled the damage. Suddenly realising he’d have nothing to keep himself occupied with if he spent a whole day awake, he leaped up and threw his energies into re-establishing comfort in his home.

It took a couple of hours to clean out the basement, but he was left with a nice pile of kindling from the furniture he’d been accumulating, and the ironwork was still mostly intact. The most heavy duty rubbish cleared away, Spike headed to the dump to start collecting replacements, detouring only to pick up some new fuses from a hardware store. From the dump he was able to liberate a few items – a new TV was first on the list, a few old power leads and a blanket were enough to get him through the next day, but as he was walking out he passed a book bin. Unable to resist, he punched a hole in the side of the bin and began sorting through the books left there. They were mostly cheap tatty romance and thrillers that were wildly popular for long enough to have a film made and then everyone started throwing them out. There were a few hard-backed coverless ones as well which he held onto without knowing what they were and a few volumes of poetry. He marched back home and began to set up his meagre new belongings.

In the gloom of the crypt they looked small and insignificant, but he cherished them believing his need for these things brought him closer to humanity and to Buffy.

He settled into one of his books half an hour before Dawn arrived. He greeted her carelessly and she wandered idly round the room, commenting that it had really been hit hard.

“Yeah, soldier boy’s new hook-up redecorated it with a grenade for me.”

“Sam is so cool!” Dawn spoke with fervour and Spike, while understanding such appreciation for wanton destruction felt compelled to remind her that it was his stuff she’d destroyed.

“I’m not, at this moment,” he concluded, “her biggest fan. Speaking of,” he put his book down and unfurled from the sofa to pace towards Dawn, “your sister is particularly unfond of me right now and would definitely not want you here. Why are you?”

Dawn, perfectly relaxed as only a teenager could be, had become restless as he challenged her and now refused to meet his eyes, instead turning and playing with one of the books he’d left in a pile to be read later. When she finally spoke, the words tumbled out as though she couldn’t control them:

“I need your help.”


End file.
